Field of Invention
The present invention generally relates to input devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to hands-free input devices with social media capabilities.
Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, a social networking website may allow its users to share a variety of types of content, including multimedia (e.g., images, videos), hyperlinks, and short text messages with other users of a social networking website. Businesses, athletics associations, and professional athletes each use social media to communicate directly with users of such social networking websites who are fans of particular athletes, organizations, athletics associations, businesses, products, brands, promotions, games, and other events and activities.
Social media posts from these persons and organizations are sometimes integrated with television broadcasts of games and news stories. In some cases, these social media posts are integrated or displayed alongside live broadcasted videos in real-time.
Typically, these social media posts are made by persons with access to a text input device, such as a keyboard of a computer, tablet, smartphone, or other network connected mobile device. However, these methods of entering text input can be inconvenient, difficult, or entirely insufficient to use in situations where a user posting content to the social media website has little or no free use of their hands, such as professional athletes actively participating in televised sporting events. Thus, athletes are often limited from publishing real-time social media posts to fans using the social media website or watching a televised broadcast while participating in the event. This limitation prevents players as well as teams and sponsoring businesses from benefiting from such social media interactions with audience members in real-time during a sporting event.
Further social media posts are typically not easily filtered by recipient location or ticket status. For example, an athlete publishing a social media post during a sporting event typically must publish the social media post publicly without any differentiation between readers within the stadium in which the athlete is playing and readers outside of the stadium.
Thus, an input device is needed allowing a user to publish social media content in a hands-free manner, and further allowing the user to publish social media content to a limited audience.